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When I wrote my 4-part
biography of Harry Benjamin in October 2012, I had intended to finish with a
review of his major book. However it turned out to be a bigger task than I had
realized, and I put it aside until now. As this year is the 50th
anniversary of the book's publication, this is certainly a good time to reread
it.

A close reading reveals that the book is composed of segments that were
written at different times. Sometimes this is openly admitted. Such that chapter
1 was published in Sexology in 1961, and part of chapter 7 in
Sexology in 1963. Sometimes this is deduced such as at the beginning of
chapter 6 where Benjamin writes: “Although this volume does not deal with
transvestism specifically, a few remarks as to the therapy of this less serious
deviation, in comparison with TSism, may be in order” as if chapters 2 and 3 do
not exist. The grumpy bits at the beginning and end of chapter 4 were probably
written at a different time from the rest of the book, including the middle
parts of the same chapter.

Textual analysis, a tool well developed in literature and Bible studies (e.g.
we know the text of TS Eliot’s Waste Land before Ezra Pound edited it,
and gave us the version that is best known; The Epistle to the Philippians
contains a kenotic hymn at 2:5-11 whose theology is quite at odds with the rest
of the document). The tool is only just beginning to be used in transgender
studies. The obvious document for such analysis is Neils Hoyer’s autobiography
of Lili Elvenes (Elbe), where Sabine Meyer has made a good start.

The Harry
Benjamin Archives at the Kinsey Institute, Indiana (a US State where trans
persons are not allowed to use the toilets) is quite vast. Does it contain the
initial drafts that became The Transsexual Phenomenon? A comparison with
the published version would be a useful PhD thesis for somebody to write.

________________________

Some parts of the book do not seem to know about Benjamin’s Scale, suggesting
that it was developed after the book was partly written. The big problem in the
scale is the assignment of Kinsey Scale numbers which led inevitably to erasures, of gay
transvestites and gynephilic transsexuals. In a couple of cases Benjamin
attempts to get around this by declaring a person to be a Kinsey 3 or 4 while
being a husband and father, but a 6 after deciding to transition. As Kinsey and his team based positions on the scale on a person’s sexual history this would be an
innovation by Benjamin. In Kinsey's usage a person who was 3 or 4, and then became exclusively androphilic, would have become a 5, not a 6. Your previous history becomes part of your current history.

_______________________

Other problems with the scale are the lack of real difference between Type
III and Type IV and the lack of a type for full-time non-ops. This would seem to
have grown out of Benjamin’s previous three-part typology 1) those who merely
want to ‘dress’ and be accepted as women. 2) those who waver, who want breast
development but shy away from surgery. 3) ‘fully developed’ transsexuals. Hence
he mainly sees a Type IV more as wavering, rather than choosing to live without
surgery (despite the name).

Type I (pseudo-transvestites) is not really thought through. Three subtypes
are quickly mentioned:

Those who never actually cross-dress, but enjoy transvestic films and
literature.

_______________________ Type II is quite muddied by being labeled ‘fetishistic’ while not
understanding fetishism, a practice performed by a few transvestites, a few
transsexuals, and mainly cis persons. Type III is ‘true transvestite’,
implying that type II is sort of ‘false transvestite’. In what way false? This
is not addressed, other than talking about ‘fetishism’. Some trans women who are
into fetishism, or go through a period of fetishism, appear otherwise to be true
transvestites (Johnny
Science, Kim
Christy), and some complete the transsexual journey (Lana
Wachowski). In this, as in much
else, Benjamin paid too much attention to Virginia Prince who was obsessed that
her femmephilics not be regarded as fetishistic.

As I wrote: “Two years after
Benjamin’s book, Transvestia columnist Sheila
Niles popularized the concept ‘whole girl fetishist (WGF)’ for FPE members
who did not pass well enough, particularly if it were for lack of trying. Over
the next few years it came to be that those who failed or didn’t bother to
fashion themselves as truly feminine were ‘fetishistic’.Susanna
Valenti even estimated that the majority of members were WGFs”. I think that
here we have the key to what Type II should have been: those who don’t attempt
to pass, especially those who get off on being read. Those who want to pass are
often uncomfortable around those who don’t care to. This division, into
true=wants to pass and false=doesn’t want to pass, can also be applied to female
impersonators, as they
were then called - as long as we do not insist that they are Kinsey 0-2. Some female impersonators were women offstage (the pre-op Coccinelle, April Ashley etc) but others were definitely
men offstage.

Those who relish attention, on or off stage, are sometimes called
drag queens (of whatever sexual orientation) or attention whores. But only a
small percentage of them may reasonably be called ‘fetishistic’. So would
genderqueer and non-binary be false transvestites in this meaning? Mixing up 1960s questions and ways of thinking with 21st century concepts is an interesting game, but of limited validity. Nobody in
1966 was
genderqueer or non-binary, and so we need not pursue the question. Today very few people want
to declare any one group ‘true’, and another ‘false’. That does not get us
anywhere.

________________________

The HBS crowd made a big deal of being followers of Benjamin while execrating
Virginia
Prince. This is intellectually nonviable as Prince and Benjamin were long
time associates and Prince is repeatedly mentioned in The Transsexual
Phenomenon. She is mentioned 5 times in the first three chapters, and in
addition Benjamin also repeats opinions that we know had earlier been expressed
by Prince. From chapter 4 onwards, transvestism has been left behind, and
perhaps you hope that Prince is also left behind. However she is mentioned
another three times.

So is a change of sex possible? The Warner Books cover promises: “All the
facts about the changing of sex”. Chapter 1 (written 1961) affirms that chromosomes are only one of
seven aspects of what is sex. I think that most of us go with this. It is really
disconcerting that Benjamin reneges in chapter 3 and declares that “No actual
change of sex is ever possible”. And then again in chapter 7 (written 1963): “Furthermore, the
operation, even if successful, does not change you into a woman”.

Editor Brooking Tatum did not feel that this inconsistency was something that
should be resolved.

_______________________

Benjamin lists four motives for the conversion operation (p140-2/65-6):

Sexual. “It concerns particularly the younger transsexuals. Their sex drive
is not that of a homosexual man but that of a woman who is strongly attracted to
normal heterosexual men.”

Gender. “Especially for the older transsexuals, the urgent need to relieve
their gender unhappiness can be powerful and impressive”.

Legal. “The constant fear of discovery, arrest, and prosecution when
‘dressing’ or living as women is a nightmare for many. They want to be women
legitimately and have a legal change of their sex status.”

Social. “applies only if the transsexual patient happens to have a
conspicuous feminine physique, appearance, and manners” [while still presenting
as male]

I will leave (2) until last.
1. This became a standard criticism that androphilic trans women were really gay men in denial. This, of course, is not so, not only because many 'gay transsexuals' first explored the gay scene, but found that they were something different from gay men.

Furthermore there are men who do want
to have sex as a woman, but without being a woman, who seek to acquire a vagina, but
otherwise continue living as men. They are rarely discussed. They are not what
Benjamin meant here.
3. Fortunately – in most of Europe and North America – it is no longer a
crime to dress or live as a woman without surgery. However in many parts of
Asia, Africa and South America it still is. And in many of these countries, a
conversion operation is not recognised. However even where such legal hassles
are present, is the fear of discovery really a greater motivator than the desire
to be fully a woman?
4. As it happened there were three outstanding transsexuals in the 1960s who
were frequently taken to be women even when dressing as male: Coccinelle, April
Ashley, Rachel Harlow. Most of us are not so beautiful. However surely all three became women because they wanted to be women, not that they
became women involuntarily to avoid hassles. In the 1990s we had the example of
Jaye Davidson who was cast as Dil in The Crying Game because of his
beauty. However he is not transsexual, and continued living as a man.
2. “Especially for the older transsexuals, the urgent need to relieve their
gender unhappiness can be powerful and impressive”. This sounds like Anne
Vitale’s G3 with Gender Deprivation Anxiety Disorder (GEDAD). Should we assume that Vitale’s G1
has been split between 1 and 4?

What is missing is that persons want the conversion operation for existential reasons, in that they
want to be women, have always felt that they are women, being a woman is what
feels right, being a woman is who they are. There are other ways of saying it.
But the overwhelmingly dominant reason for wanting a conversion operation is not
mentioned by Benjamin.

One could use this section on the four reasons to argue that Benjamin did not understand at all why trans women asked for and sometimes got the conversion operation. You could otherwise argue that his support and empathy showed that he did understand, or at least sympathised. Speaking as a writer I know that sometimes I write something that seems quite dumb on rereading. A good writer does reread and takes out what jars with the overall theme of the book. This was not done re the four reasons, but should have been.

___________________

Benjamin states clearly that, except for the frequency of hypogonadism, pre-op, pre-hormone trans women are physiologically indistinguishable from cis males - except for their assertion that they are/want to be women. And likewise for trans men and cis females. But what about intersex persons who likewise seek a sex/gender change?

Benjamin worked with John Money and must have been aware of the work that he was involved in with those who at that time were referred to as 'hermaphrodites'. He would have been aware that most intersex stick with the gender of rearing, but that a few do not. And some transsexuals discover that they have xxy or mosaic DNA and then announce that they are not therefore transsexual, even though e.g. the vast majority of xxy boys grow up to be xxy men.

It is perhaps a pity that Benjamin did not comment on this.

___________________

Female-to-male persons get pretty short shrift. Not only are trans men
confined to one chapter, but female transvestites, and implicitly female
fetishists, are erased.

There are four autobiographical accounts in Appendix D. Only the first
Ava/Harriet is properly discussed in Benjamin’s text, there is also a very
quick mention of the fourth, Joe.

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About Zagria

I have a social science degree. I spent several years in the 70s doing Gay Lib counselling, and moved on to organizing trans groups. I was rejected by the Clarke Institute (now CAMH) in the mid 1980s, probably because I do not match either of their stereotypes, but was accepted by Russel Reid on our first meeting in late 1987, and had surgery from James Dalrymple some months later. I have mainly worked as an IT consultant. I have been with the same husband for 45 years.